“Elevated,” he murmured.
“Shut up,” I said.
The space between us narrowed to almost nothing, and his breath brushed my lips. For once, he didn’t look clinical. He looked certain.
But he didn’t close the last inch, and that did something to my brain.
I felt the challenge in it, the quiet control—Novak deciding how far things went, when they happened, what the outcome would be.Nope. I need that control.My hand tightened in his shirt before I could think better of it, and I dragged him the final fraction forward and kissed him.
His lips were warm and solid against mine, and for the briefest second, he didn’t move at all. He reared back, inhaled, and then he leaned in. He didn’t try to take control back; he matched me, steady and deliberate, as the kiss deepened enough to make my pulse hammer harder against his fingers.
This was a mistake. I knew that.
I didn’t stop.
When we broke apart, we were still breathing the same air, our knees were touching, and his hand remained warm on my skin.
Novak studied my face again, that same unnerving focus in his eyes.
“That was odd,” he murmured. For a moment, he watched me with that same attention he gave everything, as if the kiss had added another piece of data to whatever equation he was running in his head. “I want more,” he said, the words calm and direct in that unsettling Novak way. My pulse kicked again, but he didn’t rush the moment, didn’t push closer. “I want you to fuck me,” he added, as if discussing the weather rather than the fact that things between us were heated and dangerous.
Before I could even process that, the comms system chirped from the desk behind me. The sound startled me, and I swore under my breath and tore my gaze away from Novak, twisting in the chair to grab the headset.
“Caleb,” I said, forcing my voice back into something professional.
Lyric’s voice came through the line. “Got a data dump for you. Satellite pass and thermal sweep. Sending it now.”
“Copy.” I pulled the keyboard closer and started the download, screens filling with new windows and scrolling data as the files came through. The familiar rhythm of work took over—decrypt, route, catalog—fingers fast across the keys while my brain locked onto the task.
Across the room, Novak didn’t interrupt, and he’d stepped back the requisite six feet. I could still feel the weight of his presence, though. After a while, when the transfer finished and the system started parsing the files, I glanced back.
Novak was already standing. He picked up his mug from the desk, taking the last of his coffee with him as if the moment between us had been nothing more than another quiet observation.
“I’ll make lunch,” he said.
Then he left the room.
The door clicked shut behind him, and only then did my shoulders loosen. I leaned back in the chair, dragged both hands over my face, and stared at the ceiling for a long second.
“Fuck my life,” I muttered.
TWELVE
Novak
Climbing was the easy part.It always was.
The trees along the perimeter of the compound were old-growth, thick-trunked, and tall enough to push above the surrounding canopy. Their bark was ridged and rough, perfect for climbing without spikes, and the branches were spaced wide enough to support both my weight and the equipment Caleb wanted positioned along the ridge. Correctly placed cameras would give us a full view of the compound approach roads, the perimeter patrol routes, and the outer buildings where movement tended to cluster when a place was active.
Below me, Caleb crouched at the base of the tree with the equipment case open beside him. Inside, the cables were coiled into loops, each camera wrapped in a matte-black casing designed to eliminate reflections. He had laid them out with the same neat precision.
He handled the technology. I handled everything else.
“Higher,” he murmured into his mic, not even looking up. “Angle needs to clear the ridge line.”
I climbed another few feet, shifting my weight carefully until my boot wedged against a branch thick enough to anchor mybalance. From that height, the forest opened, and the compound came into view through the break in the trees.
The place was bigger than it had appeared on the satellite imagery. A long gravel approach road fed into a central yard where two larger buildings sat under floodlights, while several smaller structures clustered closer to the tree line. The perimeter fence cut a rough square through the forest, reinforced in places with secondary wire where the terrain dipped.
